Where We Start From
by aeternium
Summary: It should have been a night like any other. But while we waited for our heroes to grow up, we would remember that as the night everything changed.


**a story ended** _– The Jedi Temple - 19 Axinal - 10:03 PM_

"What was that, Master Ti?"

"Come, youngling, concentrate. Let the distraction flow through your mind, then release it back into the Force."

**still point** _– The Jedi Temple - 19 Axinal - 10:19 PM_

There is a suffocating feeling to the air, as though it were all rushing somewhere else before roaring back and flattening everything. _A storm_, Ahsoka Tano thinks uneasily, trying not to remember the dream, shivering under her blankets. _Just a storm._

And then the world explodes.

**ash on an old woman's sleeve** _– Hanna - 19 Axinal - 10:29 PM_

_Perhaps now,_ Mon Mothma thinks, hearing her aid's raggedly delivered message, _the galaxy might finally look upon itself and question, "What have we done?"_

**the hollow men** _– Felucia – 19 Axinal - 10:19 PM_

And then comes a sudden rumble in the air: Barriss whips around, lightsaber held at the ready: but—

-it's Master Fisto, ripping towards her on a speeder, pale pale green but all business. "I just checked, I just..." Then he sees Master Secura's body, broken and bloody, and chokes. "Oh Force, what happened?"

"They're gone," she croaks. "And Master Secura..." She turns away, no longer able to look at the broken shell of her former partner, her friend.

Master Fisto touches her cold, blue cheek with a shaking hand. "What happened?" he whispers again.

**undisciplined squads of emotion** _– Coruscant Airway - 19 Axinal - 10:44 PM_

A full side of the temple wall has been blasted away; blasted clean off, as if a child suddenly decided he no longer cared for his toy model. Smoke billows between the once-proud spires that mark the four corners of the galaxy's symbol of peace and justice. The whole building smoulders and crumbles, still burning. Still burning.

Marain Allssia presses a hand to her mouth, thinks, _Impossible._

No one should have survived such destruction, not younglings. Not her.

"Master Allssia?"

The junior padawans look so young, and so unprepared. Trel Ban looks like he might be sick, and Embera Lockhorn is staring quietly out the window of the ship as they speed away from the only home any of them have ever known. From the hold, she can hear the quiet whimperings and occasional cry of the few infants they could get to safety.

None of the younglings made it.

"Come along, Marain," Master Nu says quietly, limping past her towards the cabin, "We still have work to do."

She swallows heavily, and assumes her strictest face.

**this love is silent** _- Coronet - 1 Solis - 12:25 AM_

_There's no one to take her from us now._

Malia sobs, more in anguish than relief, and falls into Challo's arms. Little Amia snores lightly on the bed behind them.

**at least we exist** _– Lhanpur - 1 Solis - 2:36 AM_

"Twice-damned fools," mutters the white witch in her cave. She needs no news story to know what has happened, no message from a dear friend on a datapad to feel what she feels in her very bones. The Separatists, Dooku, the Jedi, every civilian in that galaxy so far from her now… they were all doomed from the start.

It is a blessing she realized when she did. She alone was saved.

**how far one can go** _- Shili - 1 Solis - 4:34 AM_

Ahsoka has never been singleminded except sometimes in battle there's blasters and droids and Master Anakin jumping between laughter and shouts and there's far too much going on to worry very much about anything

but now is _different_, now everything and everyone are gone all the scents are blended together in the greatsmellyplains but all Ahsoka smells is that scent she knows as well as her own that now shrieks _anakinplobarriss_ with every sniff and there is no room left in her mind for the great plains and blaster memories and everything that makes no sense, and she thinks _why why did you do this why?_ when her feet get tired but no room for questioning no there is only the smell and the chase and the wild thrill of the togruta pressed down for so long.

**to say the courageous thing** _– Coruscant Industrial Park - 1 Solis - 9:02 AM_

"Here," Jaya Dem coughs, slapping his datapad – carrying the special edition of the news – onto the shiny desk.

Aen Jinn takes it wordlessly.

_BETRAYAL AMONGST THE JEDI! REPUBLIC REORGANIZED INTO EMPIRE FOR HIGHER SECURITY!_

Aen stares at it for a moment, stares very hard, and Jaya wonders what might happen next. Aen's spent the past four years campaigning for higher freedom of the press, but more than that, his uncle had been his hero before he passed on ten years before. No one is sure what will set him off more.

"You're actually printing this?"

"I have to. That aid – Sly Moore, she practically wrote it up for me."

Aen shakes his head, turns to Jaya, to Beils and Strako. "We aren't going down that easy, gents," he grunts. "Even if it means going underground. We get the news out – the real news – or die trying."

**at the end of an action** _- Theed - 1 Solis - 11:47 AM_

"Dad?"

"Sola?" Ruwee Naberrie says. "What...? What time..." He catches sight of his older daughter's face in the sunlight, and sees that Sola (his daughter, the architect) is shaking.

"Dad... she's gone."

**war is not a life** _– Korrokrrayyo Mountain - 1 Solis - 3:10 PM_

When he finally returns home, the cub is awake and he is not surprised. Cubs like battle, they like the idea of it. They think it a game, and his own is no different. He jumps on top of him and asks for the details – all the gory details – asks if he was injured, did he kill anyone?

He will not answer that. He sets the cub down, not in his usual mood to play. The stillness worries him. They lost.

"Han, we need to leave. Go pack your things."

**know the place for the first time** _– Aldera – 1 Solis – 6:29 PM_

Wordlessly from Bail she takes the tiny child – (her daughter, the Naboo-Tal princess of Alderaan) – and for the second time in her life Breha falls in love.

**where we start from** _– Anchorhead Flats - 1 Solis - 7:51 PM_

He is coming. He called ahead to say he was coming, not to ask, and while that may bother Owen, she couldn't be more pleased. She had never hoped for children, not since that fateful day when she was fifteen – (no eggs, he'd said, but her mother called it barren and that was the day she thinks she stopped loving her). This man doesn't know he's bringing her greatest dream to her on the wings of death.

It's selfish, and Beru knows it.

So she does the only logical thing, the only way they can mourn now. She goes behind the house and takes a slab of rock, and battles with the hard earth next to where her real mother was lain the rest three years before. Her real son had carved something in their native tongue for her headstone, but Beru doesn't know the language. She doesn't know the dates. Owen won't let her carve the names.

But it will have to do, if they are ever to move forward.

**Footfalls echo in the memory  
Down the passage which we did not take  
Towards the door we never opened  
Into the rose-garden.**

_1 Solis, 981 ATC_


End file.
